22 DOWNBEAT JUNE 2020

As the coronavirus moved across Europe in mid-March, trumpeter

Avishai Cohen sat in his Tel Aviv home, contemplating the growing
probability that his monthslong tour in support of Big Vicious, his
band’s new ECM album, would be wiped out.

W
hile someone else in his position might’ve
been stressing about the situation—the
loss of income and inability to share
his music with listeners—Cohen sounded remark-
ably sanguine, in-line with the conscious decisions
he’s made during the past decade to step out of the
mainstream and slow down his life.
“This is my main thing right now: Live in the
here and now, take things one day at a time,” he
said during a phone interview. “I’m stopping
everything I can, and stripping everything to
the bone. I’m spending a lot of time listening
to music, playing, going for walks, enjoying my
kids.”
To those who have known Cohen well over the years, his deci-
sion to step back from the mainstream—to move out of New York
City and disconnect from many of the social networks that musi-
cians must embrace to conduct business—is no surprise.
“I’ve known Avishai since 1997, when we went to Berklee together,”
said saxophonist Miguel Zenón, who was Cohen’s bandmate in the SFJAZZ
Collective from 2010 to 2014. “He’s always struck me as someone who has a very
laid-back attitude towards music and life in general, someone who lets things come to him. You
can hear this in his playing and music making, but he’s like that as a person as well.”
JUNE 2020 DOWNBEAT 23

In his band Big Vicious, Avishai Cohen plays trumpet and synthesizers.
Cohen, 42, has created a broad and deep
body of work—encompassing multiple part-
time projects, like his trio Triveni, with bassist
Omer Avital and drummer Nasheet Waits; his
quartet with Waits, pianist Yonathan Avishai
and bassist Barak Mori; and the 3 Cohens, his
“family band” with siblings Anat (clarinet) and
Yuval (saxophone). In addition, the trumpet-
er has lent his distinctive instrumental voice to
recordings by a diverse range of musicians that
stretches from rock veterans like the Red Hot
Chili Peppers to the up-and-coming singer/
keyboardist Kandace Springs.
Having first played in public at 10 years old
and toured with the Young Israel Philharmonic
Orchestra, Cohen was a seasoned perform-
er when he arrived in Boston to attend Berklee
College of Music on a full scholarship. He
turned heads when he placed third in the 1997
Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International
Trumpet Competition. Later, he relocated to
New York and became a familiar face on the
city’s club scene.
Zenón said it’s no surprise his friend’s
career in the States had the trajectory it did.
“He’s one of those guys who can do pretty
much anything,” the saxophonist said.
“Nothing feels like it’s too difficult for him.”
With a tone and sense of spacious freedom
steeped in Miles Davis’ work, Cohen was a wel-
come addition to the New York scene at a time
when keyboardists were rediscovering elec-
tronics, drummers were looking outside the
jazz canon for new rhythmic inspiration and
string players were expanding their textur-
al role in combos. But the trumpeter also had
the type of jaw-dropping technical facility that
drew comparisons to forerunners like Freddie
Hubbard. And, as a composer, Cohen could
create the kind of open-ended environments
that invited collaborators to step inside and
make the space their own.
“Even in through-composed pieces,
24 DOWNBEAT JUNE 2020
©Caterina di Perri/ECM Records
[Cohen] is not dogmatic about dictating the
flow and shape,” said Waits, who played with
the trumpeter for 10 years and recorded five
albums under his leadership. “He leaves things
open to interpretation, so it’s different every
time we play it. He captures some of the vital-
ity that you would feel in an Ornette Coleman
tune, but there’s always a certain element of
freedom in his compositions.”
While his first decade in the United States
was marked by a series of increasingly high-pro-
file gigs, life at the epicenter of the jazz universe
wasn’t sitting well with Cohen.
“I wanted to get out of the rat race,” Cohen
said. “In New York, if you want to take a few
months off to rest, you need to get a new mort-
gage or something. I wanted something that was
exactly the opposite of New York; something
simple and cheap that would let me sit, stay put.”
In 2011, Cohen, his wife and two children
left New York to return to Israel, although his
schedule continued to keep him on the road for
more than half of each year. But that pace of life
began to pale as well.
“Eventually, we moved to south India,”
Cohen said. “It seemed to be the right place
for four years. We liked it a lot. The kids had a
good school. Life was easy and simple. I stopped
chasing my tail. I would just do yoga, run, spend
time with the kids.”
Other than playing with tabla master Zakir
Hussain in Mumbai, Cohen said his Indian
sojourn was not about the music of the place.
“It wasn’t a musical situation,” he said. “I didn’t
study the music of the area at all. India was just
a place where I could relax and practice.”
Eventually, though, Cohen’s marriage
ended and he once again relocated to Tel Aviv
in early 2019. “I just had enough of it, so it was
time to go back to Israel. I missed my friends
and needed musicians around me again.”
But once he was back, Cohen found himself
wondering exactly what kind of music he
should pursue there. He realized one thing was
clear: He didn’t want to start another quartet. It
was time for something new—or at least a new
spin on something old.
Around six years ago, he launched Big
Vicious, a singular quintet in which he plays
trumpet and synthesizers alongside guitarist
Uzi Ramirez, guitarist/bassist Yonatan Albalak
and drummers Ziv Ravitz and Aviv Cohen (no
relation). While the material is new, the band
has roots that reach all the way back to the
bandleader’s youth in Israel.
The eclectic guitarists are friends from his
high school, while Aviv Cohen—who also
works under the name Sol Monk—is a
Jerusalem native the trumpeter worked with in
New York. The concept for a funk-influenced
unit with double instruments is something its
leader explored as far back as 2007.
“I worked with this type of repertoire for a
while in New York with various personnel,”
Cohen said. “I had two drummers, two bass
players. Meshell Ndegeocello played in it,
Adam Deitch [from the band Lettuce] played
drums, Mark Kelley from The Roots, Jason
Lindner. My sister played with us, too. The rep-
ertoire for it just continued to grow.”
Tel Aviv’s multifaceted music scene—where
electronica, pop and trip-hop co-exist and
spark hybrid approaches—proved to be the
ideal setting to reignite what had been a name-
less entity during its New York period.
Resurrected shortly after Cohen initially
left New York for Tel Aviv, Big Vicious was orig-
inally on his mind when he signed a contract
with ECM Records in 2015.
“We planned on recording a few years ago,”
Cohen recalled, “but it took awhile to find the
right aesthetics and figure out how to play prop-
erly with the two drummers. It was a challenge
and a quest. At the time, recording it with ECM
didn’t seem like the right move, so I went with
the quartet,” which recorded Into The Silence,
his 2016 ECM debut.
Along with the material Cohen developed
for the band during his time in New York,
Big Vicious began to build arrangements and
new tunes. The sound of the ensemble began
to reflect the diverse experiences of its mem-
bers, according to Cohen, but one element—
the presence of two drummers—continued to
bother him.
“Working with two drummers, I kept won-
dering, ‘How tight can we get it?’ In the past few
years, especially when Ziv joined, it started to
change. I wanted to strip it down, find the sim-
plicity. It’s all about reduction and repetition.”
Every band that has attempted to combine
two drummers—whether it be the Grateful
Dead, the Allman Brothers Band or saxo-
phonist Joe Lovano’s Us Five—has had to
find the sweet spot where percussionists like
the Allmans’ Butch Trucks and Jaimoe com-
plemented each other’s styles and touch, and carry this into the next take.’” played it the way it should be played.”
flowed as one, rather than bumping against one Despite how easily the album came togeth- From beginning to end, then, the gestation
another and drowning each other out. er in the studio, and how aware he’d been that and recording of Big Vicious’ debut seems to be
“I think the most commonly known con- Big Vicious represented a major departure from the perfect culmination of Cohen’s attempt to
cept for multiple percussion instrumental- what he’s done before, particularly for ECM, live life in the moment.
ists in a situation like this is to work out parts Cohen said the results still held a significant For those who have accompanied the band-
and responsibility within each song to prevent surprise for him. leader on this part of the journey and know him
train wrecks,” Ravitz said. “But here, we want- “It was only when I listened to the playback well, like Waits, it all makes perfect sense.
ed to find something else. We decide what the that I noticed I have almost no solos on this “Avishai was always looking for that inner
music needs and not what drum part is needed. recording,” Cohen said. “It surprised me, but I peace, and trying to resonate that through his
We follow the idea of the song. We can change didn’t mind it. I said, ‘We played the songs the music,” Waits said. “He’s always conscious and
responsibility even within a phrase. For exam- way they needed to be played.’ That place where aware of what’s happening, and trying to do the
ple, someone plays the main groove and the I normally solo, we just let the music sing, and right thing. He’s on the search.” DB
other colors around it, and midway through
the song the other drummer can take over the
main groove and we change parts. [Big Vicious
producer and ECM Records head] Manfred
Eicher described us many times as one big octo-
pus. We listen to each other very deeply. We
play less. We think of ourselves as one unit with
the responsibility for the music and the free-
dom that comes from jazz.”
Even with the drummers locked in, though,
Cohen had to get over one more obstacle before
taking the band into the studio. “We did a mini-
tour in May 2019, just before rehearsals were to
start for the recording,” he said, “but I had just
moved back to Tel Aviv, so my mind wasn’t on
writing. I told the guys, ‘Look, I didn’t bring
anything, and I don’t feel like spending four
days just rehearsing old material.’”
So, the band spent four days writing new
material and working up versions of Beethoven’s
“Moonlight Sonata” and Massive Attack’s 1998
trip-hop hit “Teardrop.” Joining them was Tel
Aviv-based Yuvi Havkin (aka Rejoicer), the
influential producer, beat-maker and founder
of the Raw Tapes label.
“The music was created with the mentality
of pop music where the intention was our
guideline followed by details of execution using
the idiom itself,” Ravitz said. “The self expres-
sion comes with the nuances and freedom that
comes from jazz, without the improvisation
parts being so grandiose. It forces us to be self-
less with the intention of pop musicians, the
execution of classical music and the mentality
and freedom of jazz.”
“We focused on what we wanted it to be and
what we didn’t want,” Cohen said. “I said, ‘Let’s
think about what we don’t like about music, and
let’s make sure we don’t do that.’”
That attention to the moment continued
last August when the band convened in
the same studio where Cohen’s last quartet
album—2017’s Cross My Palm With Silver—
was recorded, in the south of France.
“We used our environment to help shape
the session,” Cohen said. “Between tracks, we’d
take a break and go outside. We were work-
ing in a beautiful setting; there was a beautiful
breeze outside. I said to the guys, ‘Let’s inhale
this feeling, feel the breeze on your skin. Let’s

JUNE 2020 DOWNBEAT 25